


with a bat and a blade

by LyriumTainted



Series: Just Deacon Things: W I G [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Drabbles, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Other, Post-Relationship, Pre-Relationship, face changing liar boy, i will never have a beta i can promise that, no beta we die like men, still cant write but i'm trying, sunglasses to hide the sadness man
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25247212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyriumTainted/pseuds/LyriumTainted
Summary: get back up and get my foot in the door,and my face on the pagemake my mark in the worldwith a bat and a blade.It's a body of work that you can't ever changelike a body of years that you take to your grave.(Drabbles of my sosu and her favourite shitty spy)
Relationships: Barbara/Deacon (Fallout), Deacon & Female Sole Survivor, Deacon (Fallout)/Original Character(s), Deacon (Fallout)/Original Female Character(s), Deacon/Female Sole Survivor, Deacon/Sole Survivor (Fallout)
Series: Just Deacon Things: W I G [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726144
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. i just want to unfold; simply simple

**Author's Note:**

> short one to start the series off with :)

“-I’m in love with you.”

“... That’s unfortunate, but of course you are, I’m great-”

“Deacon! I’m being serious!”

Nora threw her hands up in exasperation, jostling the rifle attached to her back with the motion.   
“I know we don’t do feelings unless I’m drunk or sleep-deprived in your hopes that I won’t remember the little details you give away like they’re not precious to me, but for fuck’s sake, I’m sick of stepping around it, pretending we don’t hold hands or like you haven’t let me teach you how to dance, like you didn’t kiss me that night in the Third Rail!”   
She was walking backwards to make Deacon face her, despite knowing that both having a serious conversation on the open road and keeping her back turned to potential dangers were bad ideas. She didn’t even remember what lead up to her admission; if she’d blurted it, if there’d been more thinly-veiled flirting like there usually was, if he’d even said anything at all. But it was out there, and it needed to be addressed.

“I mean, come on, am I just imagining things? We’re both… incredibly fucked up people, I know, I mean, I’ve probably cried in front of you more times than we can count, but I thought you, we, might’ve… maybe, been making progress. Together. About everything. Y’know. My stuff and your stuff.”

For a man who never stops talking, Deacon was incredibly quiet. Nora looked at him almost pleadingly, and he just stared back, carding through half-formed thoughts until he could string enough together to say something, _anything._ His glasses, like always, infuriatingly obscured his eyes, and his expression gave away nothing that Nora might’ve liked to glean.

“Nora,” He raised a brow as if to say ‘see? I’m serious’, “maybe we should have this conversation when we get to Diamond City-”

“No! We’ll never have it if we put it off and you know it. We’ll lose our nerve. _I’ll_ lose my nerve. We'll tiptoe around it until one of us dies, and I've tried giving us both time but I'm just _sick of it._ If you don’t like me how I like you, just _say_ it. Just tell me, please, and I won’t bring it up again, I’ll keep our boundaries and travel with someone else, just-”

Nora ran a hand through her hair, dirty and matted from weeks on the road with no available shower, and sighed, not ready for Deacon to surge forward, cup her face with his hands and pull her into a desperate kiss.  It wasn’t particularly romantic, there were no sparks and the world didn’t stop around them, their teeth clinked against each other’s in the initial contact, but Nora couldn’t hide her relieved sigh through her nose as her hands found purchase on his shoulders.

“Don’t travel with someone else,” He breathed, finally breaking the kiss and resting his forehead against hers. “Please.”

Nora closed her eyes, hands still on his shoulders, taking a moment to process things for herself. “Alright,” She agreed softly. “I won’t.”

They stood there for a moment, breathing the other in, before Deacon pulled away first, opting to move his hand down to one of hers, lacing their fingers together, instead of stepping away completely.

“We should uh, talk more. When we get to Diamond City.” 

Nora nodded, opening her eyes to stare at their interlaced fingers, before turning to the open road ahead of them.

“Yeah. We should. Let’s get going then, huh?”


	2. you gotta want to break the hearts of all those pretty porcelain dolls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually wrote a story for something referenced for once, amazing, right?  
> anyways hancock's the best wingman for nora :)

Nora was no stranger to Goodneigbour; she often visited friends in the ghoul-town, most notably the Mayor.   
She and Hancock had run together for a little bit after Bobbi No-Nose’s disappearance and had gotten fairly close before she joined the Railroad, and took up with Deacon more often than not.

He was always happy to have her back, drink her under the table, or be a shoulder to cry on when she needed it. And, frankly, she often needed it; it was hard to wake up in a new century, after an apocalypse, with a dead husband and missing son. Hancock never judged her for needing someone to talk to, and Nora never judged him for the chems he took or the dark parts of his past he shared with her.

Nowadays, Nora really only got downtime to hang with her favourite ghoul-brother when Deacon was running a solo mission, or when they needed to stop in Goodneighbour for supplies. It was one such supply run when they’d met Hancock talking to Daisy, and despite the less-than-amicable relationship Deacon and Hancock had, Nora agreed to go out with Hancock for the night.

She’d offered Deacon an out; he didn’t have to come with, or they could head out early for their mission, she wouldn’t make him go if he didn’t want to, but he’d decided on coming with, and found himself sitting at the Third Rail, watching Nora try to teach Hancock a dance from her time. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Deacon came along to make sure she was safe. He didn’t trust the Mayor with her, and it was a known fact between the two of them, but looking at the two try their best to not trip over each other and fail miserably, it wasn’t hard to see that he made her happy- it would almost hurt to look at, if Deacon didn’t often convince himself he was emotionless.

Magnolia sang a faster tune, likely just for the two fools trying to dance, and while Hancock always looked inebriated in some way, Nora was rosy-cheeked with excitement only, having barely touched her drink before getting distracted and pulling Hancock off of his stool to teach him whatever dance the song reminded her of.   
Deacon had never heard the song, maybe it was one Magnolia had just found or one Nora had recovered for Travis- it was clear she enjoyed it, so maybe it didn’t really matter.

He was content with just watching her dance circles around Hancock, the switching of songs barely affecting her style of dance, even bringing new patrons up to teach them her dances. It was only when Magnolia switched to her usual slow song crooning that Hancock decided it was time to take a break, giving Deacon a knowing grin as he took a seat right next to the spy.

As the strangers she’d been dancing with found themselves seats or other partners, Nora’s wandering eyes finally settled on the one person, it seemed, who’d yet to get up and dance with her.   
She all but glided over to their seats, leaning much farther into Deacon’s space than usual and batting her eyelashes at him.

“Deacon~” She sing-sang, “You should… Come dance with me!”

He could hear Hancock chuckle and reminded himself to get the ghoul back, as he was positive he’d encouraged this.

“Listen, Charmer, I don’t dance-”   
  
“ _Everyone dances!_ ” She insisted. 

“I was born with two left feet- literally, of course, the radiation and all that-”   
That got a dramatic eye roll out of Nora, who blew a strand of hair out of her face and pouted as well as a grown woman could do without looking utterly ridiculous.

“Deeks, _c’mon,_ we’re having a break, I’ll teach you how to slow dance, it’ll be fun! You’re disguised anyway, it’s not like anyone but Hancock knows you-” To which got the two a tip of the hat from the Mayor, and seemed to solidify that this was a good idea in the vaultie’s head.

Deacon went to make up another, equally terrible lie about why he couldn’t dance with her, when Nora got tired of it and just grabbed his arm, yanking him off his stool with a surprising strength that essentially forced him to stand up.

Pulling him closer to Magnolia’s ‘stage’, Nora faced him and started adjusting both of their hands.

“See? You just put your hands there, on my back, and I put my hands here…” She put her hands on his shoulders, relatively easy to do comfortably, since they were close in height, and glanced up at him to check if this was alright.

“It’s really just swaying back and forth, but it’s fun with the right partner. Just one dance, alright? Then you can go back to being all sneaky or whatever.”

They weren’t often so close to each other, didn’t often feel the other’s body heat or get close looks at the other’s faces.   
Deacon could count the freckles on her face that he rarely got to see, mostly concentrated across the bridge of her nose and a few on her eyelids, the rosacea by her mouth and corners of her nose; she stared back at him, noting his own scarce freckles, little white scars that she’d never noticed before, the crow’s feet she could see peeking out from behind his sunglasses. 

“Alright,” He finally agreed. “One dance.”   
But it ended up being more than that; halfway through Magnolia’s third song, he remembered his one condition, forgotten in the slow swaying of the dancing.   
Somewhere amidst the movement, they’d inched ever closer, Nora’s face tipped upward’s toward his, his eyes lingering on her lips.

In slow, almost nervous movements, Deacon brought his hand up to her cheek, running the pad of his thumb over the faint freckles there. Both gave each other time to back away, to recognise what was happening between them and to realise it was a bad idea.   
Neither pulled away, and so Nora met him in the middle.

  
It was a soft kiss, not explorative or messy. It was the kind of first kiss that teens get, new and innocent. When they ended it, neither saying anything just yet.   
Deacon looked almost sad, if one could glean an emotion from behind those sunglasses, and quickly pulled away, apologising quietly to her- for what, she didn’t really know, -but she was left standing on the makeshift dance floor, watching the retreating figure of the Railroad spy as she tried to figure out just what to do now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hancock absolutely wolf-whistled at them. you just know it.


	3. maybe just a good book and a heart to break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wOw long time no update, huh  
> i fell off the writing train for a bit, sorry- I've been really into mass effect lately, "soldiers never die (they only fade away)" is really good if you're into joker/jeff like i am. but I'm back! mostly because of NV and boone lol.  
> it's genuinely all due to Rivennz that i update my deacon stuff- they're so sweet whenever i post something new! :)

“What were you like before?”

Deacon and Nora didn’t often get downtime; before Nora was a double agent, they were always going to safehouses and dead drops. Now that she was pretending to work for the Insititute, there was even less time between them, and it was often filled with silence. A moment of rest for the wicked.

“Before?”

Nora had taken her jacket off- her sunglasses, her scarf, her boots and jacket were all thrown haphazardly in a pile by her sleeping roll, and she’d thrown her legs across Deacon’s as she laid on the ground, head turned towards the fire.  
Deacon had- against his better judgement, -taken his own sunglasses off, hanging them from the collar of his shirt, and Nora was pointedly not taking explicit notice of their change in routine.

“Before VaultTech turned you into a TV dinner.”

Nora scoffed at the phrasing, an increasingly familiar smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She adjusted her legs so that one of hers was under one of his, another on top, thinking now about how much she’d changed- how much she’d had to change.  
“I wasn’t like I am now, that’s for sure,” She decided,  
She wasn’t really sure why he was asking, he’d certainly heard her talk of her pre-war life. Sometimes it felt like that’s all she ever talked about, but she knew those were the days she missed it most.  
She’d told him of Nate, and their almost-perfect life, and of her homeland- her mother and father, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d married Nate. There really couldn’t be more he would want to know, right?   
“I used to be really shy, if you can believe it. Tiny, mousy little Nora, nose always stuck in a book.” 

The last part, Deacon could believe. She could talk circles around him when it came to literature, and he was no slouch- for Wasteland standards, anyway. It was something he’d liked about her as soon as he learned it.  
But shy? She always had a way with words and people- her codename was Charmer, for crying out loud. Nora was the first to make friends wherever she went.  
“I almost don’t believe that you were shy- you were skittish when I first met you, but I’ll be fair and say you had good reason to be.”

“Ooh, how kind of you. I really was shy- didn’t have a lot of friends, I was an easy target for bullies in school. Things change when you have to learn to kill people with a pistol you found in a vault after a 200-year sleep, I don’t really worry about people judging me anymore. Everyone’s greasy and awkward out here.” Nora glanced over at her companion, finding him already looking at her. She gave herself a moment to admire his eyes- or maybe it was to appreciate the gesture of trust, though she couldn’t help the butterflies in her chest as the thought that his eyes got more blue every time she saw them- before turning her head to look at the sky, folding her hands over her stomach.  
“That’s kind of the reason I liked Nate, at first. He was so easy to talk to, so charismatic. He had power over the room the moment he walked in- and he wanted to talk to me, for some wild reason. How could I not fall in love with that?”

Nora studied the clouds, barely visible against the almost pitch-black sky, for once being the one to hide her eyes from her partner.  
Deacon didn’t say anything. Neither was sure where to bring the conversation; Nora just let the silence build until she couldn’t handle the weight.

“Sometimes I think about what Nate would think of me now. Who I’ve become. I’m still me, but… There are days where I feel guilty for feeling more comfortable holding a gun than I did holding a baby. I loved Shaun to the ends of the Earth- he will always be part of my soul, the tiniest bundle of stardust I’ve ever held, -but I know that if I’d been born here, in the wasteland… I think there’s a wildness in me that would’ve been set free a long time ago.”

It wasn’t a sad statement, nor anything proud. It just was. An acceptance of the truth. Something she’d clearly thought about frequently, bottled up until there was a good time to say it out loud and let it go.

Deacon had similarly turned his gaze to the sky, perhaps looking for stars that both knew he wouldn’t be able to find. Something about this moment felt oddly domestic- the familiar desire to bolt burned in his chest, crept up his throat like the sensation of needing to throw up. He hadn’t decided, yet, if that feeling was an indication of a good thing when around Nora, but he knew it mostly happened whenever she started spilling her guts.

“I think you and I must’ve been similar, before.”  
For him, Nora didn’t want to ask what he meant. Whatever he was willing to give up, she was willing to accept as is. They both knew what ‘before’ meant for him, anyway.  
“Oh, really?” She asked, wanting to hear more but not particularly wanting to spook him by digging. “I think I can see you as shy- it kind of fits with the ‘mysterious’ label you have going on, now.”

He laughed, softly, barely more than a breath, and shook his head.  
“Not quite the same thing, but sure. I know my job now is to talk to people, but I didn’t like to, back then. I liked reading what I could get my hands on and talking to my wife. Barbara was… always the more outgoing, of the two of us. I was happy to just be around her.”  
Instead of the usual heavy air that usually came with talking about their deceased spouses, Nora just felt comfortable- maybe wistful, but it was a comfortable wistful.  
She unfolded her hands from each other, reaching on towards Deacon’s, lightly patting the earth and wiggling her fingers to get his attention when she couldn’t reach any further without sitting up entirely. He smiled slightly, still keeping his head and eyes tilted to the night sky, and closed the distance between their hands, letting Nora tangle their fingers.

It was late, and both had things to do the coming morning, but a small moment of peace was worth another day of exhaustion.


	4. you know that beauty is only skin deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part one bitches i decided soulmate aus were in order

There were strings connecting everyone; some to just one person, some to multiple. Some were platonic, some were romantic.    
Sometimes the people found each other, sometimes they settled with what they had instead of what they  _ could  _ have, sometimes peoples’ strings broke.   
And some people, some people didn’t have a string at all. 

There were plenty of reasons, of course; whoever it was attached to hadn’t been born yet, or didn’t exist at all, or maybe they just weren’t tied to fate like everyone else- some people were just that unlucky, to be forgotten in Fate’s big plan.

Nora had never had a string, but she’d always been able to see everyone else’s. The curse of being untethered, she supposed.

Always outside of Fate’s plan, always able to see everyone else’s story; an outsider looking in on the grand scheme.  
It had bothered her as a kid; she was forced to hide her ability, either for fear of teasing, or of being pestered by kids to tell them if their soulmate was their crush, but as she grew she learned not to care so much. She figured she might get a string later; it was rare but not completely unheard of. That was what her mom used to assure her, when Nora still said she didn’t have a string, but by the time she turned twenty, Nora decided it was best not to hold on to that idea-- there was no way she was going to be the forty year-old cougar going after a person twenty years her younger, soulmate or not. So, she started dating; people with strings, people with no strings, people with broken strings.   
Nothing lasted long; she’d feel bad for dating someone with a soulmate, as most people had, and everyone else just fell through.   
She thought she’d found her ‘good-enough’ with Nate, a man with a broken sting and someone willing to love her despite what she was missing.

She was happy in her marriage and with her baby; whatever she felt about not having a stupid red string attached to her hand could be eclipsed by what she felt when she thought about her happy home, and she could be good with that. She thought she could be good with carving her place in the world.

  
Everything was good, finally.   
  
Until the bombs dropped, and she was sealed away in that godforsaken vault-

Frozen like some kind of science project or TV dinner.  
She thought Nate getting shot and Shaun being stolen was just some horrible dream at first, a nightmare that she could wake up from, until she actually did wake up, and everything was wrong.   
She almost didn’t believe it at first, when she tumbled out of the cryopod and tried to catch her breath. Nora couldn’t get out fast enough, having just enough sense to take Nate’s wedding ring-- a perfect twin to her own simple gold band, --before tears started obscuring her vision.   
  


It was a blur between waking up and escaping the Vault; the giant cockroaches and the skeletons of scientists flashed through her mind even as she tried to shove them away. 

She didn’t need to think, she needed to _run_.

The scraping of gears as a platform slowly brought her to the surface served as a white noise to help her block everything out, if only for a little.

A gulp of fresh air only helped stem the steady flow of tears until she saw what the outside world looked like-- the yellowed landscape stole the breath from her as readily as it had given it. 

A sob escaped her before she could catch it, and she soon gave up trying to stop at all   
Between trying to process what she had just been through, what she was seeing in front of her, and dry heaving into the nearest bush, she took no notice of the thin red line tied around her pinky.

  
  
  
  
  


\-----------------

  
  
  
  
  


Deacon didn’t care much for the soulmate business.   
He’d had his fair share and more of heartbreak related to the stupid little string on his left hand, and the concept of some outside being playing with his life and deciding there was ONE perfect person for him left a bad taste in his mouth.   
Could also be the cigarettes, though. He could never tell.

It was only by sheer luck that Deacon had been near Vault 111, passing the hills by Sanctuary. It had been a complete roundabout way of getting to where he was going, a route that he couldn’t justify other than sometimes the urge to take the scenic route of the Wasteland struck him.   
The vibration of the Vault opening could be felt for miles, surely, and through his scope, he could get a good look at who-- or what, --was leaving.   
He wasn’t expecting a woman. For some reason he’d had his imaginary caps on it being a mutant of some sort, that would’ve made sense with what, admittedly little, he knew about vaults and their inhabitants, and he certainly hadn’t expected her to collapse the moment she saw the surface. Sure, the Wasteland was pretty ugly, but it had to be better than the sterile white he’d seen in other vaults, right?   
He watched her for a moment, watched her cry so hard she threw up, unaware anyone was around her at all, though he wasn’t sure she’d know if he was there even if he were jumping up and down and yelling. She seemed pretty consumed by whatever grief she was dealing with-- maybe they kicked her out, that was usually why only one vaultie would leave, other than of their own volition, and if Deacon had to guess, it definitely wasn’t the second option.   
He stayed longer than he’d meant to, long enough to watch her slowly get a grip on herself and make her way down the hill towards the empty houses that made up Sanctuary Hills.   
Vaulties didn’t tend to last long out here, so he didn’t put much thought on her retreating form, pulling away from the sight on his gun to resume his trek; the chance of seeing her again was slim-- it was hard for a Wastelander to make it out there, much less some soft vault-dweller.   
It was the same reason he didn’t put much thought into the red string he glimpsed; no, it would do him little good to dwell, he decided.   
  
Deacon didn’t care much for the soulmate business, not anymore.

  
  
  
  
  


\-----------------


End file.
